So WD My Cloud Home... garbage or not?

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sfsuphysics

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So I've recently "cut the cord" (the TV one at least) and I've been using Plex on my computer as a media server with a Roku Ultra (with Plex app) to stream movies, tv shows, and other things....all totally legal I swear, trust me dood! However watching hard drive space get chewed up real quick with this plan was thinking of just throwing another hard drive in there, but then I went down the rabbit hole at looking at NAS storage devices, which I've heard conflicting results over whether or not Plex supports it or not, and then this one device the Western Digital My Cloud Home edition which seems to be supported, in expensive and can easily handle up to 1080 video with no problems.

Now I know I can get a 4TB HDD for anywhere in the $100-$130 range (maybe cheaper if I really search for deals) but for an extra $40 or so to have 4TB of storage and I don't have to keep my computer on, always get shit when I need to reboot for something and my kid is watching cartoons that get cut off, seems like a tempting avenue to go down. However don't know if this is a piece of crap device or if it can do what I want fine.

And please no talk about Plex sucks, built a HTPC, etc... sub $200 is where I need to be with this, because otherwise I just throw a 4TB drive in my main rig and pay the extra 40 cents or whatever it costs per day to leave it on 24/7
 
I'd actually get a proper "beginner" NAS (Synology would be my advice (more user friendly), but QNAP is also good (better for multimedia consumption)) with space for somewhere between 4 and 8 drives, or expandable with extension units.
Then just start with a 4TB HDD (although I personally will go 10TB :D) and expand as needed.

But to be fair, I'm currently also just on 4TB, but that's mainly due to budget constraints. The 2nd bay will get a 10TB Ironwolf-drive, and the first bay will get upgraded somewhere down the line.
 
So, I haven't used the WD My Cloud Home devices personally, but I have done some reading on them and have used other (Synology) NAS devices.

With that said, I can speak to some of the topics here.

Firstly, with a Roku Ultra on a local network, you likely aren't actually performing any transcoding. Most of the time, the numbers quoted by NAS vendors are referring to the number of streams the NAS can handle live transcoding. The Roku Ultra supports direct play of a bunch of formats, which is playback without trans-coding, and so the 'capabilities' of the NAS in that regard don't much apply.

As for the My Cloud Home, it's a competent single-user 1080p H264 PLEX server in the case you do need the transcoding, which is something you would use if you streamed from any kind of remote location. If you have 4K anywhere in your future, then the My Cloud Home simply won't play ball with it; it doesn't support H265/HEVC.

Obviously being a separate NAS would allow independence from your PC, which is nice. Better NAS devices like the Synology are capable of some fancier tricks, such is iSCSI drive mounting (you can make space on the NAS show up on your PC as if it was a local disk and not a network drive), security camera support, and other such features but I'm not sure if that's worth it for the cost for your case.

If I was in your shoes? I'd probably stick with just buying a drive. If you wanted to later on buy a diskless NAS you could just move the drive over. If you never see yourself doing that, you could do worse than the My Cloud Home.
 
Yeah the NAS route does seem tempting but it really just is to cost prohibitive to be of much benefit. I mean right now the My Cloud Home is like 20-50 more than a 4TB hard drive, I mean obviously its probably a lower end drive in the MCH device, but if I were to put a drive in my system it probably would be a higher end model so the comparison in price isnt too far off
 
Had one for a while a couple of years ago.

3 RMAs in 3 months

Junk.

If you can’t get a NAS, even a USB share plugged into a router would probably be better
 
Plex is so-so with external NAS units. As long as you're doing direct play it should be fine, anything transcode based on the server side would cripple the unit unless you have a enterprise grade NAS with the resources to back it up (gets into the thousands of dollars). If you need the transcode route, a dedicated machine with local/external drives is most economical (though not the most redundant).
As mentioned, if you're only doing direct play then almost anything will run the server side including a basic NAS on shared storage, required performance would be detonated by the wife/kids (and Plex might be laggy depending on the library size).
 
Spartacus09 said:
anything transcode based on the server side would cripple the unit unless you have a enterprise grade NAS with the resources to back it up (gets into the thousands of dollars)
Click to expand...

This is... not true. Many modern NAS devices have hardware accelerated X264 decode and encode. The WD My Cloud Home specifically supports hardware accelerated X264 encode at up to 1080p30, as listed here. It's limited to a single stream as well.

Please note, on some NAS devices/PLEX installations you may also have to actually pay money for PLEX to get the hardware accelerated transcoding features. This is a link to PLEX's official NAS compatibility list, which includes whether the devices support hardware accelerated transcoding or not. The WD My Cloud Homes are listed as supporting 1080p hardware transcoding, and specifically mentioned with an asterisk on the spreadsheet as not requiring PLEX pass to enable it.
 
IMO, get a NAS as a NAS and then buy/build whatever separate PLEX transcoder gizmo you need. I don't do Plex but I have a Dlink NAS unit DNS-325 that has given many years of good service. Caught a good deal on BF for both the unit and HDs. (just before the great Thailand flood spiked HD prices). A combo PLEX capable NAS runs the risk of being rendered obsolete if PLEX updates their codecs and your NAS is EOL for support. It is a sad reality that NAS makers often EOL support well before most units in the field die. My DNS-325 for example.

If this isn't an urgent crisis, get a short list of NAS units that can do the job and watch the sales.
 
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